Friday, May 18, 2007

Wow...I've been gone a month. A whole month.A great deal has happened too.Work is work. Much like Michele, I have been counting down to the end of the year. My seniors are done. They have nine school days left, and they are letting it be known. My freshmen, however, are also done...at least spiritually, though they have another two weeks after the seniors are done. It's hard to discuss poetry with kids who would rather be out in the sunshine. In their defense, however, it's hard to prepare poetry lessons when you would rather be out in the sunshine.So what's been going on the last month?

Jerry Falwell died...and Hell welcomed him with open arms.Ok, ok. I became middle aged. How? My wife and I bought...sigh...a minivan. A nice, silver Nissan Quest with all the bells and whistles. Still...it's a minivan. Again, somewhere my 19 year old self is preparing to show up and beat me up and ask, "Where the hell has your life gone?!"On the other hand, I won a Nintendo Wii. No, not from Vita.MN, but from a contest at a comic book store. I stopped in to buy my sister a copy of the new Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic (where she is, the closest comic book store is easily an hour away), saw the contest, and thought, "Hey...what the hell." I ended up winning a Wii, Extra remotes, and 2000 Wii Points. My wife thinks my lucky streak is coming back.Way back when, I used to win contests all the time. Not in the same way my grandmother won. See, she and my grandfather went to Las Vegas a long time ago, and the guys running the hotel recognized my grandfather as a big-wig at GM. So they asked him, "Sir...how much do you want the little lady to win?" That would never happen nowadays. Back to the point. I was lucky. I won a giant pearl by picking the right clam. I won toys, comics, money, and more. The absolute shining moment was when I won a car. I was six years old, and my mother bought me a coke. I opened the cap, and won a Ford. Unfortunately, my mother and I made the mistake of having me turn in the cap as a prize. The dealership we chose was able to say, "Oops...the kid won, not the mom, so we don't need to give out the prize." It was sad, but that taught us both a lesson: Always have a good game plan, and always know how they can screw you.What else? My son is rapidly moving toward his first birthday (only 32 days away). It's strange watching him change. He couldn't move without help not too long ago. Now, he can almost feed himself.

With work, and personal life, and everything else, I think Tom hit the nail on the head when he changed his link to me (which by now is probably gone) to become "The Invisible Man." I thought about Ellison at first, but that was not the intention. He meant Griffin from Wells' The Invisible Man. And it's interesting, because most people don't really look beyond the Sci-Fi aspects of the story to see that the character is in fact tragic. A brilliant man, Griffin discovers how to become invisible, only to lose his humanity in the change. In some ways it reminds of Doctor Faustus, the Christopher Marlowe story. Both characters have brilliance and can change the world...but both use their gifts for personal gain. Faustus ignores salvation because of its simplicity, and Griffin loses his humanity (and his brilliance) because of his need to gain power and other human wants.

Am I saying that I have become mad and power hungry? No. However Griffin keeps attempting to rationalize what's happened to him. Even as he can no longer do the basic human elements (such as sleep, for he sees through his eyelids), he attempts to use logic. That's how I have been feeling. I haven't been writing...but that because of how busy I am. If I am no longer busy, however, what then will I write about? This is the logical paradox I am in currently. It's also that, my like the title's character, I have not been able to write lately. This is really the first time I have sat down and had the time to try and write in a month. I thought about it during the last parent/teacher conferences, but I was really busy. We had a first come, first serve setup, and we had SO MANY parents come. For me it was parents worried about their kids not graduating. It's good to see that they care.

So here is my promise, dear reader. If you are willing to stay with me, the pieces will flow in again as Summer begins. That I can promise. There will be tales of things that have happened, interesting observations, and questions cheerfully answered.